Amazon Ads on Various Generators

[telophase]

So I set Amazon ads running on the generators. They haven't actually resulted in any income--I've had a grand total of one click-through and zero sales in the weeks since I installed them--but they are providing me a bit of entertainment.

I set them to be context-dependent, so they look at the stuff on the page they're installed and suggest things appropriate to that page. If they can't figure out anything appropriate to that page, they default to either art supplies (on the art-related generators) or how-to-write books on the writing-related generators.

What are they showing me?



Art Prompt Generator
Four magazines: Victoria Return to Bliss, Clean Eating, The Farmhouse Movement Magazine and Teen Boss

Fantasy Art Prompt Generator
Art supplies: and 82 piece Deluxe Creativity set and a 142-piece wood art set (i.e. pencils in a wood box)

Fanart Prompt Generator
Two books: Awesome Jokes that Every 6 Year Old Should Know and A Programming Project: Learning to Code with Google Sheets and Docs

Pub, Inn, and Tavern Name Generator
Two books: The Magnolia Inn and McGuire's Irish Pub Cookbook

Fantasy Novel Title Generator
Two books: The Name of the Wind and The Wolf of the North: Wolf of the North Book 1 (Volume 1)

Space Opera Title Generator
Two books: Space Opera and Design of Rotating Electrical Machines

Steampunk Novel Title Generator
Two books: Design of Rotating Electrical Machines, and a biography of Butch Cassidy.

Military Science Fiction Title Generator
Two books: Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century and The Military Science of Star Wars

YA Contemporary Novel Title Generator
Two books: How to Write Anything: A Complete Guide and How to Write a Novel

Cool Bits Story Generator
Two books: How to Write Anything: A Complete Guide and How to Write a Lot: a Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing (the answer to that is to stop messing about with title generators)

Steampunk Story Generator and the YA Dystopia Generator
One book and one app: The Amazing Story Generator: Creates Thousands of Writing Prompts and Movie Plot Generator

I haven't put ads on any of the others: not the Kinkfic generator because I expect Amazon wouldn't like the keywords, and not the shifter romance generators because I haven't got around to it yet. And not the Machineries of Tarot generator because that is somebody else's intellectual property. edit: With explicit permission of the rights owner, I now have ads on it! It may take a while for Amazon to begin serving ads: the algorithm has to analyze keywords on page loads first. :)



You may get different results: I think the ads also take into account any Amazon cookies you have in your browser to serve you thing they think you might like. They were all serving me books on Google Docs a while back, and I never figured out why.

Comments

[yhlee]

telophase, you have my explicit permission to put ads on the Machineries of Tarot. If you need me to supply that to you in, like, a letter or email or something for officialness' sake, I can do that too. I'm personally dying of curiosity to see what the hell books Amazon would advertise based on hexarTarot! ;)

[telophase]

Hahahaha! XD Sure, I'll do that! This should probably be enough for permission--if anyone complains, I'll send them to you (or they'll complain to you and you'll tell them you said I could).

The question is what should I set as the default search tag? "genocidal space opera"? "defeatist tarot"? XD

[yhlee]

I think "defeatist tarot" could be really hilarious. XD

(I'm in a very Tarot mood as I have been reading Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom and entertaining myself with the "homework" spreads all day. I should get some actual writing done, though. XD )

[telophase]

Ads added! It may take a bit before they start serving actual ads--the algorithm has to see what pops up in the page first before it starts in with ads. I told it to focus on books, Kindle books, and toys& games (where Tarot cards are) so it'll preferentially serve things from those categories, although it may still serve things from other categories.

I put "defeatist tarot" in as the default search string. I don't know if it'll give up and fail to serve anything! XD

[yhlee]

I put "defeatist tarot" in as the default search string. I don't know if it'll give up and fail to serve anything!

HA HA HA HA HA that would be too funny. XD

[telophase]

If it's still not showing anything in an hour or so, I'll change the search string to something else so we can see what it serves up. XD

[yhlee]

I'm getting ads!

- Before Tarot Kit
- Modern Tarot
- The Rider Tarot Deck // a classic!
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
- Mystic Mondays Tarot // ugh, Mondays!
- Starman Tarot Kit // based on some David Bowie album?!

=D

[telophase]

Heh! XD I took the "tarot" part out of "defeatist tarot" when I still didn't have any ads so it's just serving "defeatist" at the moment. Except to me, apparently. I have no ads. XD I even turned my ad blocker off!

edit: I'm getting ads at home! On the main page I'm getting Tarot, but when I go to the Vidona reading I'm getting DEFEATIST, which mostly appears to be CDs from a band named that and Rosie the Riveter buttons made of "defeatist metal," whatever that is.

[oracne]

This is fascinating!

[telophase]

Getting a peek into the back end of things always is! I get to pick what general categories I want the algorithm to add weight to--I pick books, Kindle, and magazines, usually, figuring that's more appropriate for the generators--and supply a default search string if the algorithm comes up dry on a visitor. So I understand why I got magazines on the art prompts generator, although not why those specific ones. I'd have expected some more art-focused ones, but maybe the owners of the ones showing up are paying for ads so they get weighted higher?

[rushthatspeaks]

I am surprised by how good some of these are. I mean, Butch Cassidy + electrical engineering is pretty much what most steampunk I run into is like...

[telophase]

I was surprised at how apropos that one was!